"And speaking of Mr. Gregory, your father thought he could sit back in an office with Victory Public Relations on the door and watch the money roll in. But right after I came on board he saw his old partner limping down a nearby street. Just in case Mr. Gregory had tracked him down, your father gave me his pistol to keep in my desk in the outer office. Sure enough, one day when I was there alone Mr. Gregory burst in mad as hell, waving a gun, and pushed by me into your father's office. I got out the pistol and sent him off dragging a wing and swearing he'd get even. So if you ever see a tall guy with a limp and a shock of ginger hair, you'd be wise to do the same. I'll show you where I keep the pistol."
To sweeten the pot Uncle Clarence promised to teach O'Malley how to drive. He himself had come to driving late in life and didn't really enjoy it. And there was a lot of driving. “We make our collections personally,” he explained. “We aren't in the line of work where we give out our address."
O'Malley remembered visiting their first client, a Mrs. Sutwell, whose dark secret he never discovered. “You stay here,” said Uncle Clarence. “I should have warned you to bring a book.” He was gone for several hours. When he came back he said, “A very lonely woman and one great talker."
When the woman died a few years back she left Uncle Clarence money in her will. “Ah, there are going to be a lot of tin ears in heaven,” he said.
* * * *
The funeral procession drove between the two brick columns into the cemetery parking area. The Catholic corner was set apart by stanchions and a chain. An undertaker's man opened a section of the chain and the hearse moved inside.
By the time the mourners made the walk from the parking lot to the cemetery plot the coffin lay over the open grave on the broad straps of the mechanism to lower it into the ground. Everyone gathered around on carpets of artificial grass lain over the raw earth.
When O'Malley's uncle had his stroke he had written everyone telling them Mr. Gregory had died, taking their secrets with him to the grave, and Victory Public Relations was no more. Even so, these few had come to bid Uncle Clarence goodbye.
There were the Dixons, she in her furs and he in his dove-gray chauffeur's uniform. When Dixon deserted his unit in World War II she spread the story that he'd been killed in action. He returned home with a beard and they pretended he was her chauffeur who lived in a room over the garage.
There were the Peacocks. When the first Mr. Peacock died he left her a substantial yearly income, provided she never remarried. Later she fell in love with a man who was as reluctant as she was to give up the money. So instead, he changed his name to Peacock and moved in.
Next to them was Dora Burke of the Burke sisters, looking her age at last. Her older sister Maude liked to dress up in the youngest fashions. Dora preferred an older, more conservative wardrobe. Their reputation for eccentric dress concealed the fact that they were unwed mother and daughter.
At the grave's edge was George Farley, looking very sad for he had faced Uncle Clarence across the cribbage board for years. Farley was a client by inheritance, so to speak. An elderly relative he knew only slightly had invited Farley to come for a visit, promising the trip would be to his profit. His host lived in a substantial yellow brick house in a town whose wide main street declared that it served a farm community where horses and wagons had once been common. One night the relative took Farley up to the attic and unlocked a door to a small room. There in a chair with her wrists between her knees sat a middle-aged woman with a round face and vacant eyes humming to herself. The man spoke to her kindly and called her Cousin Gladys. The tuneless humming continued. Farley's relative closed the door. As he turned the key in the lock he cautioned, “Watch out for her. Our Cousin Gladys is a crafty one."
On the way downstairs he told Farley that when he died his estate would go to Farley if he promised to take care of Cousin Gladys until she died and keep her existence a secret from everyone. He also mentioned the encumbrance of the blackmail payments, the result of a disgruntled housekeeper let go when his wife was still alive.
On O'Malley's first visit to the Farleys he and his uncle stayed for dinner, during which Farley passed over an envelope. “Here's for Mr. Gregory."
"Mr. Gregory thanks you,” said Uncle Clarence.
Afterwards, while Mrs. Farley was clearing away the dishes so her husband and Uncle Clarence could play some cribbage, O'Malley said he thought he heard the front door close. Farley jumped up. “Cousin Gladys is out again,” he said.
Farley drove them down quiet streets of houses whose living rooms were lit a dim blue from early television screens. All of them squinted into the rain and darkness. “We've got to find her before she catches her death of cold,” said Mrs. Farley.
Farley took them to places Cousin Gladys had gone before, a culvert under the railroad tracks, a treehouse behind an empty Queen Anne, an old toolshed. Finally he parked the car in front of the town band shell next to the heavy old machine gun, a memorial to the World War I dead. Farley got out, removed a section of latticework around the base of the band shell, and ducked inside. A moment later he came out with his arm around Cousin Gladys, humming to herself as best she could through lips trembling with cold. When they got back to the house Mrs. Farley took her up for a hot bath.
Years later, Cousin Gladys died. While Farley and Uncle Clarence played cribbage upstairs O'Malley dug a hole in the dirt floor in the basement and buried her. When he was done, they gathered for prayers over the body. “We will all of us lay down our heads on clay pillows soon enough,” Uncle Clarence said.
Now the thing in the attic became the hump of dirt in the basement. The Farleys continued their payments.
* * * *
At the end of the graveside ceremony the other mourners drifted back to the parking lot. O'Malley remained a little longer. It was hard for him to let go of something he'd been trying to figure out all these years. Oh, he knew why he'd stayed in the blackmailing business. On good days he'd say he owed it to his uncle, who'd helped him dispose of Mr. Gregory's body. On bad days it was because his uncle knew where that body was buried. But why had Uncle Clarence stayed?
O'Malley shook his head. Well, the priest and the limousine were waiting. As he turned his back on the grave he saw a tall, gray-headed man limping quickly toward him. He recognized Mr. Gregory, the man he'd shot over forty years ago. Mr. Gregory passed O'Malley with a muttered “I'm sorry I'm late. I expect I'll be late for my own funeral,” and went to stand at the grave's edge in silence before adding his handful of earth to the coffin's lid.
When he turned and saw O'Malley's face he smiled. “No, I'm not a violation of the one-dead-man-per-funeral rule,” he said. “I thought Clarence would have told you by now. No matter. My name's George Musgrove. Your uncle and I were good friends in the war. He saved my life when I got this.” He slapped his leg. “I was only trying to help him out. He said he needed you. That little charade of ours, he said that was something he'd learned from your father, who had, I remember him putting it, a rather deep bag of tricks."
(c) 2008 by James Powell
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: FLOORED by Twist Phelan
A commodity futures trader and former plaintiff's trial lawyer, Twist Phelan writes the Pinnacle Peak legal mystery series featuring endurance sports (which she participates in herself!). She has just completed a stand-alone novel set in the financial world, the setting she has chosen for her short story debut in EQMM.
Lindsey McCallum hurried down the street of tall office buildings kept empty of cars by a guardhouse and concrete barricades. Lower Manhattan lay smothered un-der a heavy mist that thickened the air and slicked the oily pavement. She rounded the corner of the marble-faced building at the end of the street and slammed into a freezing blast of wind off the Hudson.
Sidestepping the nicotine junkies getting in their last smokes before the opening bell, Lindsey scanned the crowd streaming through the revolving doors into the New York Mercantile Exchange.
She finally spotted Candace on the other side of the glass. Her friend waved her inside.
"Welcome to the Merc!” Candace Hale said, reaching out with both arms to pull Lindsey into the familiar warm embrace. Her voice was raspier, but otherwise Candace hadn't changed much since their high-school graduation five years ago. The blond mane still hung below her shoulders, the wide smile still featured a chipped tooth that turned what would have been cool patrician beauty into girl-next-door good looks. She was dressed in tailored pants, a dark blouse, and very ugly black boots with chunky heels that made her feet look enormous.
Candace followed Lindsey's gaze downward. “Not the cutest, I know, but a good choice when you have to stand all day. Plus they give me an extra two inches of height in the pit."
"If you're wearing them, they must be in style,” Lindsey said. In high school, Candace had always been at the forefront of fashion, while Lindsey was more miss than hit. She still had the crocheted poncho to prove it.
Candace nodded at Lindsey's pumps. “I've got an extra pair of runners I can lend you. Did you remember your jacket?"
Lindsey opened her tote and took out a fuchsia-and-gray paisley polyester coat. “It looks like something an acid-tripping lab tech would wear."
"You can forget about fashion on the Floor. The colors make it easier for the other traders to find us. And patterns are good—they hide the ink marks. Things get pretty wild on a busy day. Glasses smashed, noses broken—once a guy got stabbed with a pen."
"Sounds like they should require safety glasses ... and body armor,” Lindsey said, not altogether joking. She knew being a floor trader was as much a physical challenge as a mental one. But after the last two years, she was definitely up for it.
At the beginning of her junior year at Montana State, Lindsey had discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her, though not in the usual manner. Using her credit cards and online bank password, Steven had emptied her account of the tuition money from her parents and run up a fifty-thousand-dollar debt on her credit cards. Then he had lost it all in less than a month, day-trading on the computer.
"I don't know,” was all Steven could mumble when she demanded he tell her where the money had gone.
Beyond broke, Lindsey dumped Steven, dropped out, and moved back home to Missoula to finish her degree through night school at the local community college. Deciding she was better with numbers than with people, she took a job in the accounting department of an insurance company. Tim, her high-school boyfriend, asked her out again, but she told him no—she'd had it with men for a while. Instead of dating, she spent her free time on stock-market simulations, trying to understand how Steven could have lost so much so fast.
Lindsey quickly realized the biggest returns could be made in the futures markets, where contracts were bought and sold for the future delivery of a specific commodity at a specific price. She narrowed her focus to crude oil because of its liquidity and low transaction costs. Unlike her ex, she was a quick study, and soon began investing real money. It took almost a year, but eventually she made enough to pay off her debts and buy a car.
On a whim, she attended her five year high-school reunion, and ran into Candace in the buffet line. Best friends in high school, the two women had not seen each other since Candace had headed to New York right before Lindsey left for college.
"Acting wasn't for me,” Candace explained after they exchanged hugs. “All those auditions! But I had to pay the rent, so I got a job tending bar at this place in Tribeca. A lot of traders went there after the markets closed and..."
Over crudites and white wine, Lindsay listened in amazement as her friend recounted how she had worked her way from tending bar to a position as a natural-gas trader for one of the well-known futures brokers on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Zeibel Brokerage was not only headed by a woman, it employed only women—unique in the world of commodity futures, where most traders were white male New Yorkers in their twenties and thirties.
"Wow, that's terrific,” Lindsey said. She raised her glass of Chardonnay. “Here's to you!” She smiled at her friend, recalling other celebrations—Candace setting a school record in the 100-yard low hurdles, Candace winning the lead in the school play, Candace getting top marks on the French final after many late nights of tutoring from Lindsey.
Candace sipped from her glass. “So what about you? What have you been up to?"
"Actually, I'm doing some trading, too,” Thinking it remarkable how their lives had run along parallel routes, Lindsey described her success on the computer.
Candace seemed delighted, and immediately encouraged Lindsey to come to New York for an interview. “Do you want to be stuck in Missoula forever? This is the real thing, Lynz—you gotta go for it!"
Lindsey had to admit that her evenings on the computer were starting to feel lonely, and too far removed from reality. On the computer all that mattered was speed—the first person to enter the best bid got the buy. But trading on the Floor depended on relation-ships and fast thinking as well as quick reflexes. Lindsey thought about her cubicle at the insurance company. “Is Zeibel hiring?” she asked.
The interview went well, and Lindsey received a job offer. Six weeks later, after taking the necessary courses and passing the requisite exams, she was about to start her first day as a crude-oil trader.
She and Candace joined the line at the security checkpoint. “Ready to make some money?” Candace asked.
"I think so,” Lindsey said, glancing at the traders standing behind them. Some of the men stared back, but most looked away. She lowered her voice.
"Part of me wishes I were still in my pajamas, in front of my computer at home. I've heard stories about how women are treated on the Floor. The guys either blow you off or try to screw you—one way or the other."
Candace nodded. “There are two groups here—the gentlemen's club and the boys’ club. Or, as you'll soon find out, a few good and the mostly bad. But don't worry, I'll give you the down-low on which traders go out of their way to take advantage of us, and clue you in on the scams. The locals are the worst—real cowboys."
Lindsey knew that “locals” were the true entrepreneurs of the Floor, trading for their own accounts rather than executing orders for clients, like Zeibel did. “Everyone in class talked about making enough money to buy their own seat."
"They better have the balls to go with it.” Candace laughed, then moved closer. “Sometimes we give the jerks as good as we get. Just last week I made a few extra thousand dollars front-running on a big order."
Lindsey's eyes widened. “Isn't that...” She didn't want to say the word. “Front-running” meant using inside knowledge to trade ahead of another order. If a trader knew a big buy was coming in, he would purchase the commodity, then sell at a profit after the larger order bumped up the price.
"Illegal?” Candace said. “Sure. But only if you're doing the front-running—I was the one with the big buy order. My clerk signaled it into the ring, and I repeated it back to her, making sure these two traders in the pit saw me do it. They're always watching for a chance to front-run on me.” The look in Candace's eyes showed her delight. “This time I made it easy for them."
"I don't get it,” Lindsey said. “Why did you want them to get ahead of your trade?"
"Because they didn't know my clerk had also signaled to reverse the trade.” Candace demonstrated by tugging on her ear. “The guys put in buy orders, anticipating an uptick or two after my buy order hit. But I sold instead, and my client made an extra forty cents a contract. Front-running from behind—not the nicest thing to do to those guys, but legal."
Lindsey knew Candace was right—the other traders were the ones who had broken the law. And if they were brokers, their clients had paid the price. “Wish we'd learned about this stuff in those how-to-be-a-trader classes,” she said.
"Watch what I do and you'll learn fast enough."
Lindsey winked at her friend. “You've always been my designated role model."
Candace slid her laminated ID card into the slot on the turnstile. “We need to hurry. You don't want to make Michelle handle all of the morning's orders by herself."
After they cleared security, Lindsey followed Candace down a windowless hall and into a small locker room. Candace twirled the dial on a combination lock, opened the door, and pulled out a jacket that matched Lindsey's. Once on, the oversized garment swallowed up her small frame. She reached into the locker again, this time extracting a pair of athletic shoes.
"Here—hope we still wear the same size.” In high school, the girls had gym during different periods, and Candace had borrowed Lindsey's sneakers whenever she forgot to bring her own.
Lindsey laced on the runners and wiggled her toes. “Perfect fit.” She grabbed a bottle of water from her tote.
"I'd pass on that, unless you've got a strong bladder,” Candace said. “If the market's crazy, it means five hours without a bathroom break."
Lindsey dropped the bottle back into her tote.
"Put your stuff in my locker for now,” Candace said. “We'll get you one of your own after the close today.” She unwrapped an energy bar and tore it into small pieces. After dividing them evenly between two sandwich baggies from a box in her locker, she handed one of the baggies to Lindsey. “This will help keep you going."
"But—” Lindsey knew eating on the Floor risked a minimum two-hundred-dollar fine.
Candace gave a dismissive wave. “Just make sure nobody from the Floor Committee sees you chewing. It's a dumb rule anyway. All because of the rats."
"Rats?"
"The Exchange is paranoid about them. If they can't find food, the little buggers eat the insulation around computer wires. Remember that squirrel that chewed through the power lines at NASDAQ and stopped trading for an hour? One of the biggest nightmares around here is of a rodent bringing down the world's energy markets."
EQMM, June 2008 Page 16